justice

Readings on Rosh Hashana: Hagar, Abraham, and the Wilderness

This semester I am taking Interpretation as Resistance: Womanist, Feminist, and Queer Approaches to the Bible taught by Professors Alika Galloway and Carolyn Pressler. This week’s reading concerns the story of Abraham, Sarah, and Hagar. Sarah is unable to bear children, which is unfortunate since her husband Abraham is supposed to father “a great nation” (Gen. 12.2). Sarah comes up with a plan to have Abraham use a surrogate: her Egyptian slave Hagar. Abraham agrees, lays with Hagar, and Hagar conceives. The Bible then tells us that Hagar “saw that she had conceived [and] looked with contempt on her mistress”(Gen. 16.4). Sarah responds by being so cruel to Hagar that she runs away to the desert. Upon finding a spring of water, Hagar meets an angel of God who gives her an ambivalent message: go back and submit to a life of cruelty but also your son Ishmael will be the father of nations. A mixed bag, for sure. (more…)

Will We Make a Difference or Stop at Outrage?

It has been more the rule than the exception through the last six months or so that our world, national and local news has focused on one unbelievable human atrocity after another; with a seemingly endless ability to trump the previous week’s painful emotional impact.  The capstone of this last week was the criminal case of the Philando Castile murder ending in an acquittal of the police officer who shot him. (more…)

UNITED THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY OF THE TWIN CITIES HIRES DR. PAMELA AYO YETUNDE TO EXPAND INTERRELIGIOUS CHAPLAINCY PROGRAM

(NEW BRIGHTON, Minn., July 2017)—United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities is pleased to announce that following a competitive candidate selection process, Dr. Pamela Ayo Yetunde has been selected and appointed to the Faculty, effective July 1, 2017. In addition to serving as Assistant Professor for Pastoral Care and Chaplaincy, Dr. Yetunde will head United’s Interreligious Chaplaincy Program, which she will work to advance. (more…)

Lessons from May Day

2017 has been especially rife with protests, rallies, and marches. Nor has the call to action quieted in the last few weeks. There was the March for Science on April 22, and Tuesday, May 9 is the Medicare for All Rally. There are events popping up across the Twin Cities gearing up for Pride, and Minnesota Immigrant Rights Action Committee (MIRAc) has been fundraising and hosting trainings consistently over the last month. Indeed with the coming of spring, there is a sense of renewal, of hope in troubling times, and the timeless recognition that in this season- life returns to the world in abundance. (more…)

Consultations from India to Minneapolis: a United Student’s Reflections.

In winter 2018, I took a trip to India with a group of students from the seminary, visiting sacred sites of 7 religions – Baha’i, Buddhist, Muslim, Jain, Sikh, Christian and Hindu. The trip was called The Sacred Sites of India. It was amazing. There are temples and sacred art everywhere, pilgrims and worshipers everywhere. India is busy, beautiful, colorful, crowded –– filled with delicious vegetable curries, fresh fruit, palm trees, silk saris, pashmina shawls. There are men building roads, men building buildings, men with sewing machines on the street making clothes while you wait, men pulling people around in bicycle taxis, men cooking on gigantic platters in the street, men slicing coconuts with machetes. men carrying huge loads on their backs and on their bicycles. I have never seen so many men working so hard. (more…)